British actor, comedian, author and all-round brainiac, Stephen Fry is man of many talents. And now, it seems we can add “unquestionable taste” and “impressive vision” to his list of virtues.

In between writing, acting and being variously described in the UK media as a “national treasure of the British Empire” and “a man with a brain the size of a planet”, Mr Fry maintains a blog on his eponymous website.

The subject of his blog? Technology, of course. As a self-confessed gadget fiend, Fry takes an unusual interest in the development of new technologies. He forms considered opinions on the technologies that will fly, and those that are doomed to the cyber junk heap.

And jooce, we are proud to report, has caught his eye - and impressed him.

Dedicating the October entry in his blog to “cloud computing”, Fry recalls a lecture given by Larry Ellison “many years ago” in which Ellison alluded to a future in which all computing would eventually end up in the cloud.

That future, Fry reports, is upon us. And web services like jooce, will be instrumental in delivering it to the masses.

“People often save data online in the ether or “cloud” simply by keeping it on their gmail or hotmail folders,” Fry writes. “How many times have you sent yourself a photo just so you can have a copy of it online? But many of us are beginning to dabble in true online applications and storage, in cloud computing. The advantage is that files can be created, stored and accessed from any online computer in the world.

“The network holds not only your files, but the applications that create them, while your computer is, as in the early days, little more than a dumb terminal. A stolen laptop becomes a nuisance like a lost chequebook - a bit of password changing and ringing round, perhaps, but the valuable data are stored elsewhere. We save to the cloud and only back up to our computer. ”

Some of these emerging cloud solutions, including Google’s online office suite, and that provided by zoho.com, have a distinctly utilitarian function - and exist purely as so-called ‘productivity’ applications. Whereas others, Fry notes, such as jooce, have a wider appeal.

“For those too bohemian to be attracted by anything smelling of an office, there is jooce.com, which gives users a customisable desktop and Instant Messaging tools - worth a look just to show you how far the online virtual desktop environment can go.”

Thanks for the endorsement Mr Fry. And if you think jooce in its current incarnation looks impressive, wait until you see what we have in store …

To read Stephen Fry’s thoughts on cloud computing, visit his blog here

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The ITU Asia summit continues in Bangkok today, with our man on the spot, Ian, flying the flag in Asia for jooce.

As well as participating today as a panellist on the official ITU program, Ian has been ducking and diving his way around the conference, getting his finger on the pulse of international IT telecommunications chit-chat.

Herewith, his despatch for the day:

Today, all you Joocers out there, the dominant theme of the conference was privacy and security. Obviously, those of us that work at Jooce HQ spend a lot of time making sure that our user’s data is safe and cannot be accessed by others unless the content owner explicitly shares it via the joocetop. It was fascinating discussion to hear about what various companies, governments, think tanks, and talking shops had done about the problem of bad actors. It’s only fair to say that we have a very small number of folks that attempt to get improper access to jooce content and we have been successful in thwarting them so far and we’ll continue to spend time making sure your files are
safe in jooce.

Later,
ian, your man in bangkok

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Amid the political chaos currently unfolding in Thailand, and beyond the police barricades and rows of angry protestors in downtown Bangkok, the IT and telecoms arm of the United Nations - the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) - is staging its annual “ITU Telecom Asia” conference.

The conference brings together all of the major players - government and business - in the Asian IT and telecoms industry. It’s a chance for companies and regional governments to get together and discuss the latest developments in the IT and telecoms sector in Asia - and look to the future.

Jooce has a long and fruitful association with the ITU (see the Business Week article from March of this year). Jooce also has considerable interest in the emerging shape of, and trends within, the Asian IT market. And so, we have despatched our very own in-house Doctor — Dr Ian Smith (Chief Jooce Evangelist and all-round ‘cloud computing’ guru) to the conference to take part in proceedings.

Ian will be participating as a panelist in one of the conference’s discussion forums - discussing with industry leaders the particulars of an emerging “Networked Generation” in Asia. See the forum programme here.

And, for the benefit of all our trusty blog readers, he will be sending back a daily report from Bangkok, which will appear each day on this blog.

Here’s his first despatch:

“Despite the goings-on elsewhere in the Thai capital, the ITU Asia Forum continued unabated. A fair summary of the conference delegates’ interest in the situation in Thailand can be summarized with this conversation I had at a coffee break:

ian, your man in bangkok”

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It’s been another busy week on the Latin American media front with jooce articles appearing in three of the region’s best known media outlets.

After months of persistence, our Bolivian expert, Sergio managed to place an article on jooce in the influential, pan-South American computer magazine, PC World Espagnol. From their headquarters in Miami (who knew) the good folk at PC World Espagnol write in the most recent edition of the magazine that “cybercafes all over the world will soon be serving juice”.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, El Universal newspaper published an excellent article on jooce, titled “Jooce: the free online computer”. The publication of the article, in the technology section of the popular coastal newspaper, saw a consequent jump in user numbers originating in Colombia. A testatament to the excellent work and persuasive powers of our Colombian outreach officer, Diana.

And finally, a little further to the south, in the beautiful country of Chile, our resident Chilean expert Olivia scored yet again with an article in Concepcion’s largest newspaper, Diario Concepcion. The article talked about how quickly jooce has been embraced in the Concepcion region. Well done, Olivia.

To read the PC World Espagnol article, click here

To read the El Universal article, click here

To read the Diario Concepcion article, click here

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If you, like me, are one of the growing number of people in the world who have been seduced by the ease of use and relative sexiness of the Macintosh, then today is a landmark day for you in the land of jooce.

A new version of the jooce platform was released on the weekend, and one of the primary improvements has been the fixing of many of the bugs that until now had plagued jooce’s growing number of Mac users.

For too long, we Mac users have played second fiddle to those dastardly PC users. But today, Mac users of the world rejoice - your ability to interface with jooce from the comfort of your Mac has never been better.

But that’s not all …

As part of our continuing effort to improve the jooce system, this latest version has also seen a fundamental - and important - change to the way you can upload You Tube videos onto your jooce desktop. In the previous version, you had to copy and paste the URL of the You Tube video you wanted into the Web Upload search box. With this newest version of jooce, you can search for You Tube videos from your jooce desktop. That’s to say, you no longer have to leave your jooce desktop to search You Tube. How good is that?

How do you do it? As before, click on the Web Upload icon at the bottom of the page to open the You Tube search box. Enter the key words of your search. A selection of thumbnails, matching your search terms, will appear in the You Tube search box. Select the one you want and drag and drop it onto your desktop.

It couldn’t be easier.

You may also notice that we have added Thumbnails to the jooce interface. Now your videos and photos will appear on your desktop as a thumbnail, making it easier than ever to keep track of the data you have stored on your jooce desktop.

We’re aiming to release a new, improved version of jooce every week. Sometimes, the improvements will be subtle, other times, they will be game changers. Hang on people - it’s going to be quite the ride.

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We woke here at jooce HQ this morning to a surge in user numbers from Colombia - more than 3000 new users signed up to a jooce account overnight.

The bump in Colombian users coincided with the appearance of an article in the magazine Computerworld Colombia. Congrats to our Colombian intern, Diana for the excellent job pitching and placing the article.

Meanwhile, a bit further south on the great South American continent, Chileans have once again been regaled in their media with the transformative potential of jooce. Popular tabloid, Las Ultimas Noticias, (which our resident Chilean expert Olivia informs me is the number one newspaper in Chile), published an article on jooce under the headline: “The time has come for a virtual, free PC”.

To read the Computerworld article, click here

To read the Las Ultimas Noticias article, click here

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昨天下午，在中国互联网上有某个角落好热闹。那是中国的jooce人在网上建立的一个俱乐部，并且召开了第一次会议。

我们的中国负责人，mimi，参加了讨论。200名参与者在这次讨论中，分享了jooce的使用经验，提出他们的改善建议，甚至提交了一系列为‘jooce俱乐部’在中国的口号。

“A jooce a day keeps the hard disk away”, “Just Do Jooce”（我怀疑这个口号和耐克公司的有重复），还有另外一个带有儒家色彩的： “A life without jooce is only half a life”。

中国的jooce迷创造了很有影响力的东西，让我们有点不敢当。

另据mimi的一个实质的报道, 在未来的几个星期之内，一个面对面的jooce俱乐部聚会正在筹划中。中国俱乐部的几位成员还在讨论制作一些限量的纪念T恤衫。

所有的中国jooce迷都被邀请来参加这个在线俱乐部- 点击此处- 来注册。

您也可以通过百度贴吧的jooce吧来紧跟大家的探讨 这里

愉快jooce!

A little corner of the internet in China was buzzing yesterday afternoon as a group of Chinese joocers got together online for one of the first meetings of the official Jooce Fan Club in China.

Our resident China expert, Mimi, took part in the discussion - which drew in some 200 participants - sharing jooce experiences, suggesting improvements and even submitting a series of slogans for the ‘jooce club’ in China.

“A jooce a day keeps the hard disk away”, “Just Do Jooce” (though I suspect we may have a trademark issue with Nike on that one), and the decidedly Confucian sounding: “a life without jooce is only half a life”.

Impressive stuff, Chinese fans of jooce. And flattering, to boot.

Mimi also reports a physical, face-to-face meeting of the jooce club has been planned for Shanghai in the coming weeks. Members of the jooce club in China have organised to get together, and are talking about making jooce t-shirts for the occasion.

All joocers in China are invited to join the online jooce club - click here to sign-up.

You can also track the discussion forum via the dedicated Baidu pages here.

Happy joocing!

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PC Mag in the United States has published its list of “Top 100 Undiscovered Websites” for 2008 - and eveyone’s favourite cyber-home away from home, jooce, has made this year’s list.

In an article published in the recent edition of the popular tech mag, jooce gets an excellent wrap from the magazine’s editors who describe it as a “desktop-away-from-desktop (that) lets you access your personal stuff from any computer.”

“Load up your browser-based Jooce desktop with files, music, videos, IM buddy lists, and anything else you might need and you can get to it just by logging in. And Jooce looks and feels like a real desktop, with a slick UI and good responsiveness.”

And while we are obviously chuffed to be named by such an influential magazine as a Top Website for 2008 in a list of impressive fellow nominees - we have a message nonetheless for our PC Mag friends: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Watch this blog over the next couple of weeks/months as we reveal (bit by bit) the platform changes and developments in store for jooce users. We’ve only just begun - so stay tuned for developments.

To see the PC Mag article, click here.

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Sempre fui um fã do país maravilhoso que é o Brasil. Estive no Rio, fui de Recife à Manaus e conheci todos os recantos da Amazônia, passei rapidamente por São Paulo e sambei em Salvador. Eu até desfilei no Sambódromo durante o Carnaval!

Porém, este post não é sobre a minha relação com o Brasil, mas sim sobre a do Jooce com o Brasil. Na semana passada, foi inevitável não “esbarrar” em alguma matéria sobre o Jooce. Estávamos por toda a parte!

Nosso time Brasileiro, Fernanda e Bianca, têm trabalhado muito e conseguiram publicações sobre o Jooce em dois dos jornais mais importantes do país.

Primeiro foi o Jornal do Brasil— citaram a Bianca dizendo: “Nosso intuito é democratizar o acesso à internet e diminuir a distância entre os que têm e os que não têm computador” e preveram um futuro promissor ao Jooce no Brasil —um país no qual as pessoas estão sempre em movimento e acessando suas vidas digitais através de computadores públicos.

Em seguida, veio O Globo. Sob o título “Jooce, o paraíso dos cibernômades”, um extenso arquivo que citou Fernanda e enalteceu a plataforma como uma lar para àqueles que precisam acessar e gerenciar suas vidas virtuais de qualquer computador, em qualquer lugar. O artigo também elege o Jooce como um potencial aplicativo para negócios, através de uma gerência privada de network.

Decidimos celebrar as boas notícias com caipirinhas e muito samba. Por favor, não espere que estejamos por aqui amanhã de manhã! ;)

Para ler o artigo do Jornal do Brasil, por favor clique aqui.

Para ler o artigo do jornal O Globo, por favor clique aqui.

And in English …

I’ve long been a fan of the beautiful country Brazil. I’ve been to Rio, chugged up the Amazon from Recife to Manaus, run riot in Sao Paulo and samba-ed in Salvador. I even spent one very special holiday there taking part in Rio’s Carnaval - parading with one of the esculas in the Sambadrome.

But this blog entry is not about me and Brazil. It’s about jooce and Brazil - and the fact that you couldn’t open a newspaper in Brazil last week without bumping into jooce. We were all over the place.

Our Brazilian team, Fernanda and Bianca, have been working the phones to see the publication of jooce articles in two of the country’s most important newspapers.

First it was Jornal do Brasil - who quoted our Bianca as saying jooce wants to “democratise access to the internet” and predicted a bright future for jooce in Brazil - a country in which people are often on the move and accessing their digital life from a public computer.

Then it was the turn of O Globo. Under the headline: “Jooce - paradise for cybernomads”, a lengthy article, quoting our Fernanda, extols the platform as a natural home for anyone wanting to access and manage their online life from any computer, anywhere. It also talks about jooce’s potential application for businesses - creating an easily managed private network.

We’ve decided to celebrate with an evening of caipirinhas and samba. Don’t expect us in too early tomorrow morning.

To read the Jornal do Brasil article, click here

To read the O Globo article, click here

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There’s nothing like being described as a “young gun” to lift the spirits.

So a big thank you - or should I say a big “muchos gracias” - to our friends at Chilean newspaper, El Sur, for including jooce in a large article about young web entrepreneurs taking on the big boys of the cyberworld.

Under the headline that approximately translates to: “From Paris to Concepion, young guns who are taking the internet by storm”, appears another glowing report appears about jooce’s plans to become the world’s online desktop of choice.

Using that inspired photograph (it’s like the Beatles, Abbey Road, but it’s not - get it?) and detailing the already impressive take up of jooce among Chilean cybernomads, the article describes the widespread embrace of the jooce platform across South America.

To read the article, click here.

—
y ahora en español …

No hay nada mejor que ser llamado « joven exitoso » para subirse el ánimo.

Así que muchas gracias a nuestros amigos chilenos del diario El Sur, por incluir un gran artículo sobre jóvenes emprendedores que se están tomando el ciber mundo por sorpresa.

Debajo del titular « Jóvenes tras el éxito web desde París y Concepción » aparece otro reportaje aplaudiendo los planes de Jooce de convertirse en el escritorio en línea preferido.

Usando la inspirada foto, y detallando el impresionante despegue de Jooce entre los ciber nómades chilenos, el artículo describe la adopción masiva por los latinoamericanos de la plataforma Jooce.

Para leer el articulo, haz clic aqui

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